


Bearing within him the image of a cathedral

by elveljung



Series: Project Thruple [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Epilogue, F/F, F/M, Female Uchiha Sasuke, Female Uzumaki Naruto, Threesome - F/F/M, Thruple, Triad - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-11-28 18:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18211715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elveljung/pseuds/elveljung
Summary: As a rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral, so a love triangle ceases to be a love triangle the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a thruple.Epilogue taking place 10-15 years after What You Have Tamed.





	1. Kakashi

Naruto puts her spoon down, smearing yoghurt all over the tablecloth. “I want to have a baby.”

Kakashi lifts an eyebrow over the edge of the morning paper. Sasuke calls it archaic, but he likes the printed version.

Naruto’s face is blazing and naked with pugnacious desperation, still swollen and pillow-creased with sleep.

Sasuke doesn’t look up from her coffee cup. “No.”

“You don’t get to ve –” Naruto starts.

“One, yes I do, and two, let’s fight about it after I get home from work. All right?” She bends forward, kissing Naruto’s cheek, then his, and then is gone.

Over the years, they’ve both accused Sasuke of using work as an excuse to set the timetable for any disagreement, but it’s hard to maintain that line when the hospital expects her in the operating theatre at all hours. At least the white coat is sexy, though he’s run out of playing doctor jokes. For now.

“I cannot wait until she becomes an attending,” he remarks. Apparently that’s when the schedule goes from batshit to a more ordinary level of insanity.

“You know she’s going to torture the interns,” Naruto says. “God, they’re going to be jumping from the roof.”

“Mmh. I look forward to that too, actually. What? You know making people cry always puts her in a better mood.”

Naruto laughs, her mouth wide and soft and sloppy with yoghurt. After a short deliberation, Kakashi bends forward over the table and kisses it clean.

Naruto makes a questioning face.

“Didn’t you want a baby? Time to embrace the heterosex.”

Naruto snorts into his mouth. “I gotta go too. There’s this kid I need to settle things with. His latest fosters are just…well, basically they should be shot at dawn.”

“Who knew working with people could be so inspiring.”

“Oh, sod off.” She swats his shoulder, almost tipping over the coffee jar.

“This _is_ my late mother’s sacred heirloom, you know.”

“The table cloth? Then what’s it doing on the table?”

“I’m asking myself that very question as we speak.”

A comfortable half an hour after the girls have left, Kakashi ambles out towards the bus stop. He’s got used to his defective eye, but god he misses his driver’s licence – though the lack of one might be good for keeping the peace at home, as Naruto and Sasuke are still arguing about the carbon footprint of Sasuke’s car.

 _Climate change will devastate the planet whether I drive or not,_ Sasuke maintains, _and according to most predictions the real catastrophe will hit after we’re dead anyway._

He and Sasuke have never yelled at each other the way Sasuke and Naruto often do. On the other hand, funnily, he’s the only person Naruto gets sneery with.

The bus lets him off half a block from the office, where Anko basically ambushes him with the coffee pot. “We’ve got the tender!”

Kakashi empties a sugar packet into his coffee. “We got the tender last week.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I meant about KOTO’s appealing it.”

“You’re not telling me the courts churned out a ruling in a week.”

“No, you annoying little man, I meant I talked to Itachi. He says they don’t have a case. At all.”

“Hmm, really?” He unwinds his scarf, turns on his computer. “I thought their appeal was pretty convincing. We all know SLL aren’t exactly known for their flawless adherence to procurement law…”

“And are you a lawyer?”

“No.”

“And is Itachi a brilliant, brilliant lawyer?”

“Yes, Anko, your dear husband is the best, and we shall all bow to his superior judgement.”

Anko glances at her wedding ring. He hides a smile: it’s still new enough on her finger that she seems startled to catch sight of it, doesn’t quite recognise it as her reality.

“Getting used to married life?” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“You want to keep that line of teasing to a minimum, don’t you?” She smirks like a shark. “Given all the millions and millions of pictures I’ve got of you as my darling bridesmaid.”

“How dare you, I was extremely fetching.”

Originally he’d been meant to be Itachi’s best man, but it became clear quickly enough that he and Sasuke needed to switch roles: he thinks, not for the first time, that Sasuke and Anko like each other in theory, but in practice can’t stand each other. This isn’t mendable, since it’s rooted in the unspeakable, undeniable fact that Itachi will always love Sasuke best: none of them like it, none of them will ever acknowledge it, but they all know that if push came to shove, Itachi would choose Sasuke first.

Besides, Kakashi imagines he’d have a hard time with Itachi himself if they hadn’t been friends even before he met Sasuke, the same way Anko has a hard time with Sasuke: the way you do with someone who’s hurt your loved one in ways that have shaped them, someone who could still hurt them enough to change who they are. Someone they’ve been so close to that they have to be wary of them, because every touch, every word, that isn’t a caress, a promise, is a blade in the gut.

There’s not a second of Sasuke’s life that Itachi wasn’t part of: no matter how well Kakashi knows Sasuke, how much of her he lays claim to, Itachi was always there first. It’s a kind of closeness that never goes away, that time or distance can never really erode.

He knows Anko joked once that if they hadn’t been related, they’d have been the love story of the century. To Kakashi’s knowledge, it’s the only time Itachi’s been angry with her.

It had been at a Christmas party and Sasuke, already standing under the mistletoe, had given Anko an awful leer and leant up to kiss Itachi on the mouth.

Naruto and Anko had been surprised and upset; Kakashi had shrugged. Itachi had laughed it off, flicking Sasuke’s forehead.

It’s not like they’ve never sleep next to each other, curled under the same blanket. It’s not like Kakashi’s never fucked Sasuke with Itachi right there in the room with them, his bed less than two metres away. It’s not even like they’ve never kissed each other before – that famous first date when they were little kids, a New Year’s party once to make Mikoto cry.

But never mind that. Kakashi maintains that he looked brilliant in the toga-ish get-up Anko threatened and bribed him into, and Sasuke was particularly adorable in her suit. She’s too delicate to look butch even in that kind of outfit, so came off oddly sweet. Until she opened her mouth, that is.

It was odd in a sexy way to have Naruto be the femme one in a slinky dress. She’s grown into her body, wide hips and uppity nose and toned arms and all – all of which is reassuring partly because Sasuke is very, very thin right now. He gets that as a good feminist he has no business tracking his girlfriends’ weight, but given Sasuke’s history of eating disorders it’s a reflex that’ll never go away. He loves how easily Naruto puts on weight, the lovely chubby period during recovery from a knee injury, how even now that she’s lean again there’s a solidness, a body you can feel yourself grounded by.

He picks up a pear from the fruit bowl that Kurenai insists is only meant to be decorative but which he and Anko keep raiding.

Sasuke’s been on an insane rotation at the hospital, and is so thin by now even her chest, usually the last outpost of extraneous body fat, is just gone. He doesn’t think it’s an anorexia flare-up as such – he and Naruto are in agreement that it’s not – but Sasuke doesn’t have the energy to make herself eat according to dietician’s orders when she’s stressed enough for long enough.

It’s been good to share the delicate, perennial task of keeping track of Sasuke’s eating, Sasuke’s training, Sasuke’s weight with someone else again. There was Itachi once, but when Kakashi woke up from the coma, Itachi and Sasuke were no longer on such terms that it was possible: he woke up into a world where the continental shelves had moved, where Sasuke told Naruto things she didn’t tell Itachi. So thank god for Naruto being there to pick up where Itachi left off.

“Sooooo,” Anko drawls, pushing papers out of the way to sit on his desk. “Now that we’re done with the concert hall concept – any weekend plans?”

Kakashi stretches out in his chair, letting it roll back until it’s halted by the edge of the carpet. “In-laws.”

“My condolences.”

“Ah, no, I meant Naruto’s parents.”

“It’s still weird how much you like them.”

“What’s not to like? Her dad’s got the best taste in TV. We’re planning an ANTM marathon.” Naruto will happily devour _Project Runway_ and SYTYCD, but ANTM is apparently too trashy, so Kakashi’s been reduced to watching it with Minato. Fortunately Minato makes the most fabulous popcorn, so it’s worth the extra wait.

Anko snorts. “Well, I suppose when you’re being measured against Fugaku, it doesn’t take much to be Father of the Year.”

“Ah, I don’t know,” Kakashi muses, adopting a Hamlet expression. “Now that I think about it, I suppose I was tragically orphaned at a young age and have been searching ever since for a family to embrace me.”

“Uh huh. Well, why don’t you channel your tragic backstory into some sketches, and maybe we’ll snag the library extension too.”

“You’re a slave driver,” Kakashi grumbles.

“You love it.”

“Highly debatable. But now shoo. My very great genius brain needs some coffee and some quiet.”

Anko gives him the finger but saunters out, letting him work out the worst of the kinks in the library blueprint. By lunch time the words have started echoing in his head: _I want to have a baby._

It’s not a surprise, and he doesn’t feel surprised. But it seems a bit…unreal.

He takes care to mention the in-laws again, so Anko will be distracted teasing him.

“Do they still find it weird, us working together?”

Kakashi shrugs, leaning back to keep his bean salad out of Anko’s reach. Naruto’s vegan campaigning has infected him, and since it’s out of the question to limit or criticise any food options at home, he takes it out at work. Fortunately Kurenai insisted an architect firm has to have good architecture, which means they’re centrally located, landing them with horrid, horrid rent but great lunch options. “They find it weird that Sasuke doesn’t mind.”

“I confess, I assumed she would. What? I say this with all the love in the world, but she is one possessive little bitch. Don’t give me that look, I’m not criticising her. Most girls wouldn’t want you working with your ex.”

“She knows nothing’s going to happen between us.”

“You wound me.”

“Oh, you’re a temptress from the sultriest region of hell and all, but. You know. You’re married to my best friend.”

“That’s not where I thought you were going with that.”

Kakashi lifts an eyebrow. “You thought we were headed for an, I love my common law wife?” He shrugs. “If I cheated on Sasuke, she’d get over it. Honestly probably Naruto would be more pissed. But she’d never get over it if I did that to Itachi.”

God knows Itachi would never forgive him if he ever broke faith with Sasuke…

“They’re weird about each other, those two.”

“You’re telling me. Let’s just say, the threesome concept wasn’t actually such a shock to me when Naruto came around.”

Anko laughs out loud, swatting his arm and then taking the opportunity to steal from his plate after all.

xxxxx

Naruto puts down her glass, checks her phone, sighs. “I gotta go back in.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Kakashi drawls.

“Or for their victims. There’s this girl who’s just coming in, I can’t leave her to the night staff to do the first interview, they’re never gonna get enough out of her to even make it to court…” She zigzags through the kitchen out into the hallway, collecting papers and mittens. “They just started two weeks ago, it’s a fucking scandal they’re even allowed to work nights without supervision yet.”

“I take it you didn’t get the extra funding after all.”

Naruto shakes her head. “We’re gonna have to rely even more on volunteers.” Her mouth quirks, tightens. “It’s funny how all the politicians love taking steps against domestic violence as long as it means harsher sentences, but as soon as it’s about adequate funding for women’s shelters, suddenly nobody’s interested.”

“I guess it doesn’t lend itself as easily to racist populism.”

Naruto breathes out a laugh, finding her scarf. “Pretty much. Later!”

So in the event Kakashi's alone when Naruto’s parents arrive, but he wasn’t lying to Anko: they’re the best in-laws anyone could ask for. The three of them finish the last dinner preparations together – Kakashi’s at last learning to cook properly, but Kushina’s not prepared to let him work unsupervised quite yet – and break out the wine.

“Naruto texted when we were already almost on your doorstep,” Minato says.

“I hope you didn’t mind,” Kushina adds.

“On the contrary.” He picks up the bottle and glasses, nodding towards the plates. “Could I prevail on you to get those? Let’s take this to the living room.”

Minato as always looks around with a faintly amused, faintly bemused expression, like a tourist at a film set. Kakashi supposes technically it’s a luxury flat, remembers Minato saying once, _It’s a little like seeing the Downton Abbey castle, you know? Someplace you know intellectually people live. Well, and then you see Naruto’s dirty socks, and you know somebody really is living here._

It’s at these times it occurs to him to be grateful that Naruto’s been mostly pragmatic about the money situation. She has a certain amount that she can spend on rent, or travel, or food, and if Kakashi and Sasuke want a flat or a car or a diet that costs more, well, then they know full well they’ll have to make up the difference.

“She’s working really late,” Kushina remarks several hours later.

“Ah,” Kakashi agrees. “I think actually by this point she’s doing three people’s jobs.”

“Bloody right-wingers,” Minato mutters. “This chronic under-funding, and then they wonder why social services can’t do its job. Ah, will that be her?”

Kakashi shakes his head: they can all hear the door opening, but those are Sasuke’s steps in the hallway. She enters the living room still wearing those rather sexy hospital pyjamas, and he experiences one of these sudden, choking, destabilising surges of love, like standing on the beach and the tide comes up and calls the sand you were standing on away. He makes an inviting gesture.

Sasuke shakes her head. “I’m afraid I’m knackered. It’s lovely to see you and I apologise, but I’m going to fall asleep any minute.”

You can tell it’s true, because she only reverts to Mikoto’s exaggerated, parodical politeness when exhausted.

“I’m an excellent pillow,” Kakashi points out.

Sasuke shares a look with Kushina – out of the three of them, she’s the only one who’s the closest to Naruto’s mum as opposed to Naruto’s dad – and eventually settles next to Kakashi on the couch. It’s a good thing, Kakashi thinks, that Minato and Kushina were there when he woke up: that there were adults around Sasuke that she didn’t hate, that they’ve seen enough breakdowns and awfulness already that there’s little point censoring much of anything from them now.

She empties his wine glass and curls under his arm, and good god, she weighs nothing. The trousers have already been taken in and they’re still slipping down her hips.

Kushina clearly has the same thought, slipping away to the kitchen to get the cheese before Sasuke actually falls asleep and persuading a few slices down her throat.

The conversation touches on Sasuke’s job and then drifts back to Naruto’s. “Itachi said she was a genius,” Sasuke mumbles, gloatingly proud and talking mostly into his chest. She smells of antiseptics and the faint, dark stuff he associates with the biology classes where you cut frogs and cows’ eyes open. If Naruto’s parents hadn’t been here, he’d have licked her neck, sunk his hands into her trousers.

“Really?” Minato says. “Well, I’m thrilled to hear that, obviously.”

Itachi doesn’t hand out praise lightly, but he’d been blown away by Naruto when he was doing his clerkship and saw the victims that she’d worked with in court. _The way she got them to open up, to articulate their experiences – usually in these cases you can’t get a conviction, because the victim’s not convincing enough to clear the beyond reasonable doubt barrier and there’s no real supplementary evidence. But hers… That was something else._

They’re another glass in when Kushina asks, with the concern of someone who’s working the low-wage sector herself, “Does she make _any_ money?”

Naruto loves her job, rages at it and glows with it and has never been in it for the money, and would hardly admit to her parents if she didn’t have enough – all of which Kushina’s plainly aware of.

“No,” Sasuke mumbles. “It’s not like she needs to.”

“Tactful as always,” Kakashi comments, watching Sasuke’s lids hang heavy over half-closed eyes. “She doesn’t make enough that it makes any difference in our context. But I’m sure it’s enough to live on, if she wanted to.”

 _I can do what I do because I mooch off you guys_ , Naruto’s said. They’ve laughed about it, and certainly it’s true that she couldn’t do so much pro bono work and live in a seven-room flat on her own dime, but if she up and left them she could no doubt get a better-paid position and a smaller, less central flat. If there’s anything Naruto is, it’s resilient.

He recalls Sasuke’s first description of her: _against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, oh Death!_

He knows her parents were worried, in the beginning, that they perceived him and Sasuke as a far more settled couple, as part of a unit into whose traditions Naruto had to be retroactively incorporated. They’re not wrong: he and Sasuke were family before they were lovers, and that’s a different dynamic than Sasuke will ever have with Naruto.

Meanwhile Mikoto and Fugaku still appear to consider Naruto a bemusing anormality, a kinky but ultimately inoffensive phase Kakashi and Sasuke are indulging in, though Mikoto at least adores her. It showcases their remarkable ability for self-deception, as the three of them have been living together for years; as they must’ve seen Sasuke come absolutely out of her skin with desire for Naruto on more than one occasion, must’ve seen him obviously involved with Naruto, holding her hand, going places as a couple. But of course girl on girl never counts, and they’d expect Sasuke to overlook his infidelities.

“Hn,” Sasuke says. He can tell the moment she falls asleep, the shift of her body into bonelessness.

Kushina gives her an indulgent, rather maternal look; Minato seems lowkey worried, which is his usual reaction to Sasuke, though whether the worry’s for her or for what she could do to Naruto is anyone’s guess. They make their excuses, and in their absence Kakashi pulls Sasuke closer, into his lap, so he can heft her as he stands.

He carries her into the bedroom and leaves her on the bed as he washes off the day. When he returns she’s under the duvet and breathing the soft, almost singing breaths she does when she’s asleep. He’s still caught up in that surge of love, of wild desire and need for closeness, and slips into bed behind her. She mumbles softly, softly as he kisses her neck, stroking up her legs, up under her top.

He recalls Naruto was aghast and outraged, years ago when she first walked in on sleep-sex.

_What the actual fuck are you doing, you creepy fucking fuck!_

It had been a toss-up whether she was going to call the police or kill him with her bare hands.

Fortunately before either of these options could be realised Sasuke woke up from the yelling, and was grumpy and snappy the way she is in the mornings.

 _It’s fine. No, shut up – it’s fine because I say it’s fine. This is something we’ve decided that we’re doing. It’s none of your business having conniptions about it._ She’d scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand, kept that royal glare at Naruto. _It’s no different than you and I deciding we can be violent with each other, or the two of you – oh don’t you fucking start, I know you do weird shit with food._

That turned the tide, as Sasuke wasn’t supposed to know that. But of course it was inevitable that she would, when they’ve both of them built their lives around the central fact of her presence. Most people, he’s grown to realise, have one or two support pillars for their life, one or two central facts that the rest is built around: maybe a career or a certain place to live, a family, a certain lifestyle, a passion project. The rest is frills, you do as pretty as you can with it but without the support beam it all collapses into ruin. And he and Naruto have both chosen Sasuke as the fundament of their worlds, and so there’s no keeping things from Sasuke.

 _Anyway_ , Sasuke added, _one doesn’t belong to someone halfway._

Naruto had stared at her, half challenging and half desirous as they started arguing. _One’s body is one’s own. It’s not shared property, that’s not something that can be compromised with._

In theory, Kakashi agrees. In theory, he thinks they all agree.

But in practice, of course, Sasuke had it entirely right: _We’ve decided to have our lives together – well, your body is the body you live in but I live with. How it looks, how it smells, how it feels, that affects me massively. I might not expect a veto with regard to every change in it, but I’d definitely expect to be consulted._

In the end, it’s a matter of whose preference is strongest, not of whose body it is. Naruto likes exercise more than he likes extra curves and comfort weight on her, so she stays lean; Sasuke detests facial hair more than he enjoys not bothering to shave, so his face stays clean; Sasuke grew her hair out when they wanted to see it but then chopped it off because it annoyed her more than she’d remembered it doing. There are no tattoos, because Naruto might like the idea but he and Sasuke both find it so trashy, the only possible, unavoidable reaction would be derisive laughter; there are occasional furry pets because Naruto loves them beyond reason but he’s allergic and Sasuke hates them; he decorates the place and Naruto messes it up, and they maintain a careful balance of terror measured out in one of a kind oils on the walls and wet towels on the bathroom floor.

Sasuke’s very tight in sleep. Her limbs are loose with it, but her insides remain tense around him. He licks her eyelids and fancies he catches a taste of her dreams.

xxxxx

“…you like Neji’s kid,” Naruto says from the other room.

“I do not,” Sasuke says, “which I should’ve imagined was obvious.”

“You’re her godmother. You’re pretty much obligated to like her.”

“Yes, well, I don’t. If she takes after her father, I’ll like her when she’s grown up.”

“And if she takes after her mum?”

“Then she’ll bore me, and I won’t.”

“Oh my god, this is fucking high school level bitchiness! Hinata’s a sweetheart!”

“Sweet and boring aren’t actually opposites, you know.”

Between the two of them, Kakashi and Naruto have been known to refer to Neji as Sasuke’s work husband. It’s the only explanation for how Sasuke ended up god mothering poor Reika.

 _I’m kind of really glad he’s really, really gay, you know?_ Naruto admitted when the moniker first caught on, tipsy.

Kakashi had laughed, rather warmly, tipsy too, and could only agree.

The divorce from Hinata is the best thing that’s ever happened to Neji, and maybe to Hinata too, even if they did wind up with a little girl first. These days Neji’s some kind of fellow genius at the hospital, where he and Sasuke apparently continue their best frenemies forever dynamic, and Kakashi can only be happy that the half of the hospital Neji’s cutting a swathe through is the male one.

Though of course Neji wouldn’t have been an option even if he’d been straight, because Neji and Sasuke have always been sanitary with each other, kept their hands clean of each other’s messes, and Sasuke is not fundamentally a sanitary person. She has blood and gore kind of relationships.

Shortly afterwards he hears Sasuke moaning, unsurprisingly since arguing between the girls brews very real anger but is also basically foreplay. These are not the sounds she gives him, though he’s familiar enough with them by now.

There are parts of Sasuke that belong to both him and Naruto, but there are parts that are only Naruto’s, like there are parts that are only his. This kind if moaning, of breathing with a desperation that skirts the edges of fury, like she’s drowning, is only Naruto’s.

You could call it a more ardent, a more crash and burn kind of love: to not be able to compromise, not be able to let it go. That need to make someone understand you.

You could call it a more sustainable, a more adult love, to be able to respect and be interested in someone else’s differing opinion.

He thinks Sasuke is the person she’s decided to be with him, the version of herself that she’s the most comfortable with: the person she wants to be and feels at home as. With Naruto… Well, with Naruto she comes apart at the seams: laughs like a hyena, speaks murderously bluntly of her feelings, screams until she’s red-faced and glossy-eyed. It’s a wrecked, overwhelmed feeling, no doubt as addictive as explosive.

 _A very crime passionelle kind of relationship_ , Itachi remarked once. _I confess, I was happy for her, I always thought it was good for her – but I couldn’t imagine it not burning out, burning up._

_Whereas with me, you always knew we could grow old together?_

_Well, yes. I suppose you balance each other out._

_How charming. I’m the one she likes calculating mortgages with, Naruto’s the one she fucks on the floor with. Very flattering._

_Well,_ Itachi said again, with that dry little smirk of his, _but she likes calculating mortgages._

xxxxx

In the back of his mind, Kakashi knew he and Sasuke were going to happen years before they did: knew it from what was essentially childhood, had time to grow into the knowledge.

Naruto was a very different experience. Naruto hit him like a tornado, a force of nature that on the one hand was awe inspiring and on the other upended his whole life.

They became a couple in their own right three years after they met, when the uneasy triangle/threesome had broken to pieces and Sasuke was, essentially, killing herself. They were all free agents again, had all broken up with each other, only they had to come together, there were screaming matches and hulking breakdowns and fraught conversations about possibly having the person they loved best in the world institutionalised and forcibly hooked up to a feeding tube.

He remembers sitting in a waiting room, one of the ones that try so hard to obscure their nature, filled with gauzy sunlight and real wood. He cried, bent forward over his knees and resigned to hulking, to emptying himself, to the fact that Sasuke was leaving them. On the far side of a door was her body, which didn’t look like a body anymore.

Naruto held his hand, he became aware of this after some time.

Later that night, they slept together.

It was unexpectedly good, even beyond the desperate pleasure one always finds at the edges of catastrophic loss.

He thought then that he might survive. There had been nothing so structured as a plan, or even an explicit suicidal impulse, but if Sasuke died then what would be the point? Realistically, what would be left for him except years and years of waiting for death… Naruto made him see, made him feel, that maybe there’d still be something in life for him regardless. He breathed more easily after that, with the knowledge of Naruto’s presence.

 _Do you love her?_ Itachi asked.

_I don’t not love her._

He’d felt like shit, because Itachi too was going to pieces, and by extension Anko was going to pieces, and Kakashi should’ve been there, should’ve at least tried – but he could barely exist around the fact that Sasuke was two or three kilos away from death’s door.

He and Naruto dragged each other through those purgatory weeks, leaning so hard on each other they almost broke. He thought of those parasitic vines, twined so thoroughly around a tree that it would eventually die from it but it didn’t seem to mind.

So they started holding each other’s hands in waiting rooms, started taking care of each other and taking everything out on each other. Time with Sasuke, at that point and for some time afterwards, had to be only about Sasuke, about making her survive. Everything else – well, they had each other for that. Functionally only each other.

There was the silent accord, ever after, that they had to do this together. They had tried going their separate ways, and had been miserable, had almost destroyed what they loved best in the world. So they stabilised, and eventually Sasuke stabilised, put on enough weight to stop the tube feeding and then she was able to walk up the stairs without almost fainting and looked very thin instead of emaciated. The hardcore anorexia faded into bulimia, as it does when she recovers or relapses: when she’s not starving but not able to make herself eat properly.

Eventually she was fine, or as fine as she ever gets. They never mentioned splitting up again, or re-negotiating terms. They’d already discovered ultimatums were untenable. So they had what they had, which was each other, and did their best with that.

xxxxx

Later on, past midnight, he wakes up to the sound of the shower, since Naruto as usual forgets to close the bathroom door. Minutes later she slips into bed, damp hair and cold fingers settling against his back, a kiss pressed to the edge of his neck. Her arm sneaks over his side, following his across Sasuke’s sleeping body. He intertwines their fingers, up under Sasuke’s shirt.

“You’re awake,” Naruto mumbles.

“Mmh. Your parents say hi.”

“Mmh.”

“Everything went well?”

He feels her nod against his back, the instant of damp heat as she yawns next to his skin. He rolls over onto his back, careful to keep his arm around Sasuke without disturbing her. Naruto shifts to accommodate his movement, slinging a leg over his and lifting her eyebrows.

“What?” He makes a gesture at himself, with a woman draped over each of his arms. “I’m feeling very Hugh Hefner.”

She pinches his side. “Gross.”

“Bah, you love it.”

“Uh huh.”

She settles into the crook of his arm, leg nestling between his and breast pressed flat against his ribs. The warm weight of a healthy body is massively reassuring, so grounding he wants, wildly and improbably, to cry with gratitude.

When they first started sleeping together, that too was a communal affair, only then of course it was always Sasuke between them. When they first started _sleeping together_ , it was the same way.

He’d been making the mandatory quips about watching, half a joke and half genuine curiosity, and Sasuke had been fine with it, unsurprisingly: she’s never hidden things from him. Much more surprisingly, Naruto had been combative and unembarrassed and quickly agreed.

Of course, when it actually happened it had been terribly embarrassing. The only one who seemed unbothered was Sasuke, and that wasn’t fair since she was obviously comfortable getting naked with both of them already. Naruto was red-faced and stuttering, Kakashi himself took refuge in stupid, drawling jokes.

Fortunately or otherwise, none of them has ever been one to back down.

“It’s weird if you just watch,” Naruto finally snapped. “Do something!”

She and Sasuke were on the bed by then, lying on their sides facing each other, and Sasuke at least was fully undressed. It had been strange seeing her touch someone else – faintly unreal, like a lesbian porno. He was pleased to note there was no real jealousy. While no doubt that fact was born of unfortunate sexist assumptions like another girl not being a threat, not being real sex, it was welcome and something he needed to maintain, so he shut down any feminist analysis of the issue.

He lifted his eyebrows but obediently settled on the bed, stroking Sasuke’s naked back, kissing her shoulders, the side of her throat. Yes, he decided, feeling Sasuke’s hips shift back against him even as she kissed Naruto, it was definitely more comfortable when he was actively involved. Naruto seemed to share this view, mumbling into Sasuke’s mouth and stroking up her stomach. They reached to fondle her breasts at the same time, hands jolting apart.

Sasuke snorted, stretched. “You get the backside this time,” she told him.

“Oh? Does that include…?” He let his hand slips downwards, brush her arse.

“Do you want to?”

“Well, I’d prefer…” He slipped a finger inside her delta, which was wetter than he’d earned – Naruto’s handiwork. He’d never been interested in anal, never saw the point when vaginas are basically custom built for intercourse.

Sasuke shrugged against his chest, shifting her hips to give him a better angle. “If you’re going in the back you’re using a condom.”

It felt surprisingly …not comfortable, perhaps, but natural, after that, for all the strangeness of it. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d fucked Sasuke from behind, but he’d certainly never looked over her shoulder and seen Naruto’s flushed, blissed-out face, never felt Sasuke move against him while kissing someone else, having someone else’s hands stroking up her thighs. 

That was their routine for a while, when they shared: piecemeal Sasuke. Maybe one of them got the back and one got the front, or maybe one got the upper body and the other one the lower. It was a curious intimacy, to have seen someone so intimately, heard them come, without having really touched them. But gradually he grew to enjoy watching Naruto, and there were curious glances snuck in return.

Some touching between them was inevitable, in the heat of the moment, and gradually they were less apologetic about it. Gradually, they started to linger, until there were intentional touches. She’d squeeze his arm, he’d stroke her back. They’d touch Sasuke together, fingers intertwined around her breast, or inside her, their tongues meeting in Sasuke’s mouth. Finally, they’d kiss over Sasuke’s shoulder, touch each other’s bodies across hers.

 _Would you mind if I fucked her?_ He asked this over the sound of Naruto’s light snores.

Sasuke pursed her lips. _Yes. But it’d be good if you did._

 _Mmh_. He kissed the edge of her mouth. _I love you_.

It seemed, at the time, a distant idea. He got the first indication that Naruto might be interested in taking him for a solo ride only weeks later.

He no longer remembers the conversation leading up to it – maybe there was no lead-up, Naruto’s never been the smoothest or the most conventional conversationalist – but he clearly remembers Naruto saying, abruptly and pugnaciously, clearly uncomfortable with revealing what she must have perceived as a vulnerability, _I’ve never had intercourse._

_No? Well, of course not everybody likes it._

_Of course not,_ Naruto snapped. _But it’s not that. I just, it’s just – when she says ‘sex’, at least if she’s talking about hetero stuff, then she means intercourse. Which I get because, you know, socialisation by heteronormative society centred around male pleasure – but, yeah._

Kakashi shrugged. _Well, I’m game if you are._

Naruto blinked, with every appearance of genuine shock. _Why would you – would you want that? Why would you want that?_

It was his turn to blink. _Why wouldn’t I? We’re – involved. Patriarchy or not, I do enjoy it._

_But – with me. I –_

He cracked a smile, careful suddenly. _You’re actually exactly my type, so._

Naruto sounded blank. Like taking him seriously wasn’t even an option, but the anger over his presumed teasing hadn’t come yet. _I’m nothing like Sasuke._

_No, but have you met Anko? Emiko? Ami? Actually Sasuke’s the odd one out. Whereas you, on the other hand, would fit in perfectly in the parade of my crushes. Or you would’ve if you’d been a little older._

The idea of a man wanting her was clearly foreign to Naruto, who opened and closed her mouth without speaking. _Like I don’t even – shave, or anything._

 _I’m aware_ , Kakashi agreed. _Believe it or not, I happen to prefer that._

_Sasuke shaves._

_Yes, well, Sasuke’s never exactly let my preferences dictate her personal hygiene choices._

It was a long time before she believed he wanted her. It might’ve been even longer before she wanted him. But they got there, in the end.

They’ve given each other the weight of their heads on each other’s chests, their fingers clenched in each other’s hair, the way their breath smells in the morning, the way their toes curl when they dream. In short they belong to each other, by now.

  


	2. Naruto

“I did tell them,” Naruto tells Mum.

“Oh?”

“Mmh. Sasuke refused, obviously. We’re talking about it.”

Mum purses her mouth, clearly aware that talking about it is code for fighting about it. “And Kakashi? Since I’m assuming he’d actually be more involved in this particular endeavour.”

“Mum! It’s not like that.”

“No? Were you thinking of insemination? It seems a waste of time, when you’re already seeing a man.”

“I don’t know,” Naruto admits. “I just don’t know.”

“Do you think he wouldn’t be a good parent?” Mum asks. She’s long since stopped sounding judgemental about Kakashi – in fact, Naruto believes she quite likes him – her voice simply interested.

“I think he’d be good if he wanted to.”

“But you don’t know if he does want to.”

“Mmh. I mean. I have strong feelings about it. Sasuke has strong feelings about it. He – I’m not sure about him.”

She knows Sasuke perceives Kakashi as safe, to the point where it’s difficult for Sasuke to conceive of someone not sharing that view. Naruto…doesn’t share it. She cares for Kakashi, she trusts Kakashi, in general –  rather, she trusts him absolutely with Sasuke – but he’s not reliable to her that way, has never been a safe fundament for her to build her life on.

“If, God forbid, Sasuke was out of the picture,” Mum says. “Would you stay together, you and Kakashi?”

“We’d still be friends. Or, more like – ” She makes a frustrated gesture, flour going airborn and making her cough. “More like with a sibling, maybe? Someone you learn to love because they’re yours, someone you’re closer to than almost anyone else in the world because you’ve got no choice. That’s real and that matters. A lot. But it’s not the person you’d choose out of all the world, the person you were born for. Y’know?”

“Hmm,” Mum says, looking down at the dough she’s kneading.

“Mmh,” Naruto agrees, rubbing her hands clean on her jumper. She winds up running one of them across her stomach, and feels that painful clench of emptiness. She needs a baby inside it, there’s no way around that.

 _I think it’d be really cool, you know, growing a person inside you that way? Kind of the ultimate intimacy_ , she said to Sasuke once, years ago now.

_No._

_What do you mean, no?_

_I mean it’s not cool. It’s uncomfortable and you bloat. It’s an invasion._

Naruto had been about to demand, how would you know, before she remembered that Sasuke did know. _Maybe you didn’t get to the cool part._

_Maybe I didn’t get to the part of having my nether regions torn apart? A great loss, I’m sure._

Naruto always knew Sasuke wouldn’t be carrying any children. Probably she couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to, not without really recovering from the anorexia, which at this point seems unlikely. But Naruto was always clear that she wanted kids, and she’s fully prepared to go through the pregnancy and the birth. She wants to, even.   

Probably she should talk to Kakashi, anyway.

xxxxx

Not for the first time, Sasuke has failed to show up to see her parents. She advertised weeks in advance that she wouldn’t make it to Mikoto’s birthday dinner on account of a night shift, and Naruto had been hopeful that meant they could all get out of it. But Kakashi’s going in support of Itachi, and if one of Sasuke’s significant others is attending, then Naruto’s damned if she’s not going too.

It’s always enjoyable how her presence makes Fugaku’s jaw clench, and anyway Mikoto could use someone there who won’t be nasty. Kakashi can be startlingly awful to her, in that understated way of his, and Anko’s downright brutal, and Itachi doesn’t defend her. As for Fugaku – well, Naruto assumes if he beat his children, he’s not above beating his wife, though Sasuke’s always insisted there was none of that.

She grins up at Kakashi, letting him pull out her chair. He always acts like a perfect gentleman with his lady love at these occasions, as it makes Fugaku eat his rotten heart out: it would be one thing, Naruto has gathered, if she was someone they slept with. But that she’s someone they bring out in society, someone who stands beside them in public, that’s what he takes issue with.

That’s one freak of a future grandfather who’s never going to get to babysit, that’s for damn certain.

They cap off the evening in Anko and Itachi’s flat, before taking a taxi home. She finds herself looking at Kakashi, considering, wondering –

He catches on, of course, and quickly too, wiggling his eyebrows in question.

“I was just thinking,” she says. “I don’t know, I want…” Screw talking about it, anyway. She puts his hand on her thigh.

He drops the inquiry, complying with the change of subject: squeezing her thigh the way she likes, leaning in to kiss her. He’s so different from Sasuke that way, Sasuke who always pushes, where Kakashi will always let himself be distracted, figuring she’ll talk when she’s ready.

They’re good at kissing each other by now. She remembers when they learnt each other’s faces, each other’s bodies, when there was still sharpness but also tentative warmth between them and she never quite knew whether he was kidding.

She remembers those wiggling eyebrows, that wide versatile mouth, thin straight lips and white teeth. The insistent drawl, always at the edge of teasing. Then too they’d been going home from Itachi’s, in the days of her nascent friendship with Itachi and nascent coupleship with Kakashi. _You did steal my girlfriend and my best friend – good thing I got something in exchange, hmm?_ He’d stolen a brief kiss, which lay hot and sweet on her lips.

It had been so strange to think he could want her. She wasn’t someone who’d ever been considered girlfriend material, or even really fuckable, and here he was professing to be interested – an attractive man who clearly expected people to take notice of him, someone who’d wanted the most beautiful and brilliant girl in the world and who’d got her. So in short someone who had options, what people would consider much better options than her.

It had been different with Sasuke, for all Sasuke was so far out of her league she might as well have been in a different galaxy, because with Sasuke there was always a connection: a draw, a belonging. But Kakashi wanted her – wanted to touch her, to be inside her – before there was any of that between them. It was much later, after they’d done dishes together and fought about Sasuke and talked about their families and argued about TV shows and made cakes and decided to redecorate his living room, that they actually started touching each other with intent. But the idea, long before that, that he could _want to_ , that was unsettling and new and hard to ignore. Those mocking, glittering eyes, the way he’d look at them sometimes. She’d snapped something about it, which hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected.

_Homophobic? Excuse you, do you imagine I’ve never dipped a toe in the great gay sea?_

_What?_

He’d laughed. _I’ll have you know I once made out with Itachi._

She’d felt her jaw drop. It was such an absurd lie, or such an absurd truth.

 _It was a social science assignment_ , he confessed. _We were supposed to do civil rights projects. Organise demos or write Amnesty letters or do sit-ins, all that kind of stuff. And there was that gay visibility debate going on at the time, so we decided to do kiss-ins._

She felt her nose scrunching up. _Wasn’t it weird?_

He made an expansive gesture, sprawling all over the couch. _It was brilliant! Only time I ever got an A for snogging in public._

_And Sasuke didn’t mind?_

He snorted, a dry, rather self-deprecating sound. _She found it hilarious, as I recall. Well,_ _I suspect it was fairly obvious that neither I nor Itachi have ever been into men, so._

_But you didn’t mind kissing him?_

_No, of course not, why would I? Itachi’s great. Pretty good kisser, too. It was nice, it just wasn’t exciting. You know? It didn’t…do anything. There wasn’t anything more there._

xxxxx

Sometimes love for Sasuke sits like a hot poker in her spine, claws through her chest.

She feels it now, something integral to her and painful, as Sasuke snaps at her about diapers and sleepless nights and the utter undesirability of this, and Sasuke’s legs are about the size of Naruto’s arms.

“You’re up nights for work all the time,” Naruto points out.

“I like work,” Sasuke counters. “Babies, not so much.”

“When have you ever even met a baby?”

Sasuke quirks an eyebrow, pulling on another shirt. Five layers now, and she still looks like a skeleton… “I trust you recall when I was pulled off that horrific peds rotation after three days? Babies are the worst. Also fucking toddlers.”

“Well, if you started talking about fucking them, I can see why you were pulled off the rotation.”

Sasuke snorts. “I should tip Neji off. He got stuck with the little bastards instead.”

“Ah,” Naruto says. She’s never really got to know Neji, who doesn’t seem particularly interested in people. He and Sasuke are compatible but they too are kind of – situational friends. Friends because of their circumstances, not in spite of them.

 _He’s very focussed on his work_ , Hinata said, gradually speaking faster, flushing a little. _It’s – difficult for him, I think. He never had the easiest homelife, and… you remember even back in school, he always got perfect scores, he was always the best at everything. But nobody ever saw him as a threat, as a real rival. It’s like everyone knew it didn’t matter, like – back home he was the shit, and here he’ll never amount to anything. It doesn’t matter how hard he works, how successful he gets, he’ll still never be white. I think that’s worse for him than the gay thing, at work, with white people. Whereas he’s excommunicated from our family because of his sexuality. So he’s on the outside either way._

_If he wants a family, he could be more involved with Reika._

Hinata’s the one who’s cut down on her hours, to the detriment of the entire office. She has a way of talking to the really quiet cases, warming them up, that just can’t be replaced.

It’s funny how you end up with people you never imagined for yourself; Kakashi at home, Hinata at work. The people she once thought that she’d build something with are doing other things. Chouji’s moved away to become an even more famous chef, Kiba’s shocked everyone by getting an accounting degree, Shikamaru and Gaara are coding video games, Temari’s working with Itachi and Kankurou’s in the tabloids, though whether as the writer of articles or as the subject of them sees to vary week to week.

 _I don’t think everyone’s made for caring for children_ , Hinata opinioned. _We have a good arrangement. He sees her when he’s got time off, and, well – frankly I couldn’t look after Reika the way I do, I wouldn’t have the means, if he didn’t foot all her expenses._

“By the way,” Sasuke says, “that Mizuki miscreant is dealt with.”

“Oh,” says Naruto.

It had been incredibly, staggeringly weird to open her office door one day for a standard consultation, and see the haggard adult version of one of her teenage tormentors. Someone who’d spent years calling her every dirty word there is, who’d held her head down in a toilet he’d just pissed in.

She’s never intentionally looked any of them up. She believes in moving forward. Still, she’s heard some of them have collapsed, one way or another, while some of them are perfectly successful.

She’d skimmed the file, before she knew it was him – he’d taken his wife’s name, apparently – and there were drug problems and domestic issues. A sick kid, accusations of violence, a custody battle.

 _Hello, Mizuki._ She smiled her professional smile, nodded at a chair. _If you’ll just wait here, I’ll go hand off the case to someone else._

He didn’t sit. _You’re really – yeah. Shit. You work here?_

_I do. I’ll find someone else for you._

_Because you hate me?_

_No, but because it’s policy._

It was true, mostly. She didn’t really hate him, hadn’t for a long time. But if he opened his big fat mouth the way he used to, talked about his wife the way he’d always talked to her – well, she would.

By the time she returned with another case worker, he was passed out on the floor. It was unfortunate but it wasn’t the first time someone had caved in and overdosed. They’d called an ambulance and that had been that. Should’ve been that.

Afterwards she sat in her office going through paperwork and she felt normal and she kept fiddling with pencils and she dropped them on the floor and she wanted to scream. Maybe she did.

She’d got home, still feeling normal, until she didn’t. Sasuke had been on the previous night shift and was home early for once, took one look at her and sent Kakashi out.

Naruto hadn’t realised she wanted that until she got it, could put her head on Sasuke’s shoulder and there was nobody else.

In the present Naruto blinks. “Dealt with? What do you mean, dealt with?”

“Final solution kind of dealt with. He died in surgery.”

“You _killed him?_ ”

Sasuke scoffs. “I wasn’t even in the room.”

“Explain!”

“Like you said, I shouldn’t operate on him. So I switched surgeries with Zaku.”

“Zaku’s incompetent. You keep saying it’s a matter of time until he kills someone.”

“And now he has, so he’s got fired. Without killing anyone who didn’t actually deserve it. Two flies with one convenient stone.”

“What the fuck!” Naruto demands, pushing at her. “You’re crazy!”

Sasuke stumbles backwards, spine hitting the wall. She smirks. “This is not news to you.”

It’s not. Sasuke draws a sharp line between her people and everyone else. Everyone else can go die in a fire and she wouldn’t give a damn; when it comes to her people, she has no limits.

It’s something, Naruto’s thought more than once, that the upper and the lower classes have in common: thinking the rules of society are for other people and not for them.

She goes after Sasuke, shakes her by the shoulders, not sure when it turns into holding her, furiously tight.

xxxxx

Sasuke sleeps like the dead in the mornings, but Naruto’s always woken easily. She slips out of bed now, alerted by Kakashi’s voice in the other room, his tone. He glances up at her approach, nods at the bedroom door, and after she’s closed it puts his phone on speaker.

“…aware you’re not, as you put it, part of my rabid fan club,” comes the drawl of Sasuke’s very creepy medical mentor, “but let’s put that aside to focus on more pressing concerns, shall we?”

“Uh huh,” Kakashi drawls back. “And if I could prevail on you to be so good as to specify the concerns to which you are referring?”

“Oh, I’ll specify. My little genius and her unfortunate bout of anorexia. Is this an intervention you can handle or do I need to start making calls about having her committed?”

“Fuck,” Kakashi says.

“We’ll look into it,” Naruto says. “Hang up.”

She slips back under the sheets, next to the tight curl of Sasuke’s body. Puts her hand on Sasuke’s ribs, over the hollows between them, feels the soft movements of breathing and the beating of her heart. She fancies it’s like touching a bird, the heartbeat right there in your hand with no insulation in between.

For a long time it’s impossible to leave. Then it becomes impossible to stay, and Naruto escapes her own thoughts, escapes Orochimaru’s voice drawing anxiety out of her bones and into her bloodstream, by engaging in what Kakashi calls _maso-fit – though yes, I confess, it would also make me cross._

She gets back home in time for breakfast. The table is laden, because all three of them have wildly different tastes. Naruto goes for the pancakes, glancing up at Sasuke looking sharp and regal in a straggly cardigan. Her plate contains the tiniest portion it would be socially acceptable to serve, and she’s not even making an attempt to eat any of it. She just moves the food around in these skilled, meaningless patterns, making it look eaten if you don’t know any better. It’ll be just reflex, because they obviously all know better.

Naruto didn’t know it was going to happen before it does: she starts crying. Big tears, and a lot of them, her face gritty with salt.

Kakashi’s voice comes shaky, but it’s unquestionably an order: “Please for fuck’s sake just eat.”

Naruto gulps snot. She often gives Sasuke orders, not that Sasuke obeys them; Kakashi does not, that’s not how he and Sasuke interact.

Sasuke blinks up at him, eyebrow raised, before looking at Naruto. There’s a long moment before Naruto wipes her nose on her sleeve. Sasuke glances between them, before raising her arms and pushing down her sleeves, studying her own arms with the detached frown Naruto imagines she directs at patients. The shape of her hands is the shape of a skeleton.

“All right,” Sasuke says, with dry, hard-won lightness. “That’s a bit – I’ve let it go too far.”

She reaches for an egg and eats it, neat effective little bites and no visible panic afterwards.

Naruto squeezes her arm as she reaches for Kakashi’s coffee cup, and shares a look of soaring, disbelieving hope with Kakashi.

xxxxx

Maybe this is something she should’ve let rest, since stress is hardly beneficial to fattening Sasuke up, but she’s not going to put her life on hold indefinitely because of what she’s had to accept is a chronic condition. So she and Sasuke have been fighting about the fact that her belly feels increasingly and catastrophically empty. The status quo is shrapnel and airlessness.

She wets her lips, aware she’s ovulating.

Damn Sasuke and her stubborn hatred of children, anyway.

Naruto wanders back into the bedroom, mouth twisting in what might be a scowl or a pout.

Kakashi puts away his book, making a beckoning gesture. Naruto crawls into bed and scoots closer, settling first against his side and then slinging a leg over his lap, half-straddling him. She feels antsy, rather…undone and feverish.

“She’s never going to agree,” Kakashi points out. “So it’s not a question of permission but rather of forgiveness.”

“She won’t leave over it,” Naruto says, whishing she were sure.

“She won’t,” Kakashi agrees.

For a wild moment Naruto thinks: not if it’s yours too. She won’t leave both of us.

Anyway it’s true what she told Mum, that he’d be a good parent if he wanted to be. There aren’t any heretic disorders to worry about, and the two of them already, sort of, share custody of Sasuke. They could do this.

But why would he want to? He’s in this for Sasuke, just like she is, and he’s not the one who’s going crazy craving a child Sasuke doesn’t want.

She sighs, pushing her face into his shoulder.

Kakashi makes a thoughtful sound, flicking her forehead. Naruto scowls up at him, sticking her tongue out, before tilting her head in invitation. He lifts an eyebrow but leans down and kisses her without comment. He’s…kind of always taken her up on these invitations, whether because he lives up to the cliché of guys always wanting sex or because he’s been careful not to make her feel rejected.

She presses closer, happy to have his arms settle around her hips and pull her in until she’s straddling him properly, hands sneaking under her shirt and tugging it up over her head.

It’s at the point where she’s got her hands in his pyjama trousers that she feels compelled to say, “You probably want a condom.”

“I do?”

Naruto shrugs, rubbing her upper arm, where the contraceptive implant used to sit. “I went in to change it, you know, cause it was getting – I don’t know if they expire, but anyway it was time to change it. So they took it out but I just couldn’t – I mean, I don’t _want_ to not be able to get knocked up, now. So I didn’t put in a new one. I’m not on anything.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“What? Really? But –”

He shrugs, arms warm around her. “I rather like the idea of having a kid.”

“With me, though?”

“Ideally of course with Sasuke, but she doesn’t want that.”

“So I’m second best.”

His mouth quirks, cheek dimpling. “You’d have it with her too, if you could choose. But we’re good at being each other’s second best.”

Naruto’s mouth twitches into a matching expression. She shifts her hips into a position where she can take him in. “It feels kind of dishonest. Like, doing it behind her back.”

“Would it change anything? If we told her.”

“No.”

“Anyway – if not being on birth control changed the way you had sex with her, then you should’ve told her. But it doesn’t. It only makes a difference for you and me.”

“And I told you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Of course I did!”

“It’s not like I’d have blamed you if you didn’t.”

“…that’s weird.”

“You’d know.”

xxxxx

She’s hoarse and teary-eyed and so keyed-up and anxious she might puke, but none of it can take the glow away. It’s too early for a test but she knows, she’s known from the start. So Sasuke and she aren’t really on speaking terms so much as on screaming terms, and still, and still… She presses a hand to her stomach and she’s _sure_ and she feels like a balloon that might explode with happiness, with the dizzy, disbelieving thrill of it.

She leans back against the wall and teaches herself to breathe again, eavesdropping shamelessly.

“You and Naruto are good at fighting,” Kakashi says through the door. “You’ve done that. You and I are good at compromising. Now let’s do that.”

“There’s not much compromise to be had once there already is a baby.”

“Yes, well, but – you’re sure?”

“If she’s sure, I’m sure. So the two of you have already settled matters.”

“I suppose we have. So let’s figure out how to deal with it. Preferably before all the screaming induces a miscarriage.”

Sasuke snorts.

Naruto had expected a comment to the effect that a miscarriage is only to be hoped for, and is warmed and silly with love at the realisation that Sasuke in fact doesn’t wish for that. That she wouldn’t want that for Naruto, even if it meant she’d be free of the baby mess.

“I’m not surprised Naruto got herself knocked up,” Sasuke says. “I am surprised you participated.”

“…I _have_ been sleeping with her for years.”

“There’s no way she didn’t tell you she was off birth control, so cut the bullshit.”

“Of course she told me.”

“Then what the hell were you thinking?”

“That I’d like to have a kid.”

She imagines Sasuke blinking, the way she does when she’s hurt. “Since when do you want a child?”

Kakashi breathes out, heavily enough Naruto can hear it through the mostly-closed door. “I knew before we got involved that it was off the table. So there was no point thinking about it. But Naruto’s going to have baby, one way or another, and so suddenly – now it is possible, even plausible. So I did think about it. Also it’s going to be adorable, I’m hoping it gets Naruto’s eyes and my brilliant artistic brain.”

“It’ll probably get her ADD and your allergies.”

“Good thing we’ve got a doctor in the house, then.”

Sasuke says something too low for Naruto to catch.

“No,” Kakashi says. “This was always going to happen, because it means more to Naruto than it does to you. Like, whether we have kids or not, that’s less important to you than where you work. For Naruto – she’d pick having kids, if she had to pick. That matters more to her. Which means a baby’s happening.” Another mumbled intermission, they must be very close to each other, to speak in such low voices. “Would you have preferred that? If she had it with someone else, and maybe we’d kick her out, and then we’d be shitty people and you’d keep cheating on me and we’d end up with another fucking anorexia relapse?”

They rarely every use the A-word. Naruto draws in a breath.

“No, I would not have preferred that,” Sasuke says. “And also fuck you.”

“Yeah,” Kakashi says. “Now let’s talk about nannies.”

xxxxx

“Well?” Sasuke demands.

“Just wait.” Naruto can barely keep still, all but shaking the stick until – oh god, finally, yes. Her face hurts from smiling, she feels herself glowing like someone’s reached inside her and turned on all the lights. She turns the stick towards them, displaying the plus sign.

“Well then,” Kakashi says, sounding – she’s shocked and happy how satisfied he sounds, actually.

Sasuke’s mouth quirks. “I see congratulations are in order.”

Naruto throws her arms around her, laughing with irrepressible glee; with this sudden gratitude. “God, I love you.”

Sasuke stumbles backwards, into Kakashi, who fortunately catches them. Naruto grins at him, reaching up for a high-five. “We did it!”

Sasuke grumbles but sneaks her arms around Naruto’s waist, fingers catching with reassuring possessiveness in Naruto’s shirt.

Kakashi laughs. “Who’d have thought? When we first met, that this…”

When Naruto was sixteen, and met Sasuke, and knew that out of all the people in the world, this was the one she was meant for, and then met Kakashi, and thought everything had fallen to pieces. Who’d have thought they’d last ten years and more, make a child to love together. That she could end up able to think, whoever said sixteen is sweet? Maybe wasn’t so far wrong after all.


End file.
